19 Noteworthy Stats About Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter Marketing

Social media marketing is sometimes viewed as Facebook—and then there’s the other guys.

But like detectives Gamble and Hoitz, the “other guys” of social networks may be more effective even if less flashy. (The analogy is not to suggest any of those networks approach Will Ferrell levels of awkwardness.)

Image credit: The Oracle of Film

As noted in a previous post here on social networking statistics, Instagram is now the third-largest social network (with 800 million users), behind only Facebook and YouTube. And the image-focused social network has done a better job than even Facebook of continuing to attract millennial and Gen Z users.

LinkedIn now boasts 500 million users, with half active daily. It’s the best site for reaching professionals: 44% of users earn more than $75,000 per year. Though only about 13% of millennials are members currently, that figure is growing as more enter the post-college workforce and advance in their careers.

And Twitter has 330 million users, with 100 million of those active on a daily basis. It remains possibly the best network for sharing breaking news, and is among the leading of traffic for many B2B blogs.

Any successful B2B social media marketing strategy will necessarily involve multiple social networks, taking advantage of the unique characteristics and ambiance of each. Here are 19 stats and facts about Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram, plus six key takeaways to help you create a more effective social marketing plan.

Eight Instagram Marketing Stats

1. Nearly one-third (32%) of all American Internet users have an Instagram account. (Pew Research Center)

2. 59% of Instagram users in the U.S. are under 30 years old. Just 26% are over age 50. (Pew Research Center)

3. 32% of teenagers consider Instagram to be the most important social network. Female internet users are more likely to use Instagram than men, at 38% vs. 26%. (WordStream)

5. Eight million businesses have Instagram profiles. (Facebook for Business) https://www.facebook.com/business/news/helping-small-businesses-succeed-in-a-mobile-world# Or maybe that figure is 15 million businesses. (DrumUp Blog)

6. 90 of the top 100 global brands have an Instagram presence. (DrumUp Blog)

7. Instagram is the most used social network by B2C social media influencers. 92% of influencers say Instagram was the social network they focused on most in 2017, and 87% expect it to be their top focus this year. (MarketingProfs)

8. Photos showing faces get 38% more “likes” than photos not showing faces. Photos see more engagement than videos on Instagram.(HubSpot)

Three LinkedIn Marketing Stats

9. B2B buyers turn to LinkedIn for content that will help them move forward in the buyer’s journey—and 57% are doing so on a mobile device. (HubSpot)

10. Including images in posts published on LinkedIn increases the comment rate by 98%. (HubSpot)

Eight Twitter Marketing Stats

12. 42% of Twitter users are daily visitors, with 23% saying they visit more than once a day. (Marketing Profs)

13. 81% of millennials check Twitter at least once per day. (WordStream)

14. Tweets with images receive 18% more clickthroughs, 89% more Likes, and 150% more retweets than text-only tweets. (HubSpot)

15. Video views on Twitter grew 220X from December 2014 to December 2015. (Medium)

16. Tweets with video are retweeted six times more than photo posts. (HubSpot)

17. The best day to post to Twitter is Wednesday with the best times to tweet between 12–1 p.m. and 6–7 p.m. (CoSchedule)

18. The most engaging phrases to include in tweet headlines are “this is what,” “for the first time,” “things to know,” and “will make you.” Also effective: “the truth about,” “the rise of,” and “what we know.” (BuzzSumo)

Based on the findings above, here are six key takeaways for marketing professionals:

Use multiple social networks as part of your social media marketing strategy. But don’t simply repost the same content across each network: understand the characteristics and nuances of what works best in each environment.

Instagram is most effective for brand building. It’s generally terrible for direct response. Twitter and LinkedIn, however, can be powerful traffic drivers.

Instagram is popular with influencers. This is primarily true on the B2C side, however. Twitter is more effective for B2B influencer marketing.

Be mindful of network demographics. As the statistics above clearly show, the Instagram user base skews young, while the opposite is true for LinkedIn. So, for example, be careful with cultural references. There’s no question Caddyshack, Airplane, and The Blues Brothers are three of the best movies of all time. But, tragically, many people under age 35 may not appreciate the origin of the phrase, “I am serious. And don’t call me Shirley.”

Images beat video. Or not. Photos generate more engagement on Instagram than videos do. But the opposite is true on Twitter.

Images work everywhere…but differently. Pictures that include faces get more likes on Instagram than other types of images. Posts which include images produce more engagement on both Twitter and Instagram. Memes and animated GIFs are popular on Twitter, but please do not post memes on LinkedIn.

This was the 13th post of the Spectacular Springtime of (Digital Marketing) Stats series on Webbiquity and elsewhere.

Tom Pick is a digital marketing consultant, working with Kinetic Data, a provider of enterprise service request management, workflow automation, and collaboration software. He writes about content and social media marketing topics on the Webbiquity blog.

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